CloudFront Cost Calculator

cost = (GB delivered − free tier) × per-GB rate + requests ÷ 10,000 × request rate + GB delivered × (1 − cache hit ratio) × origin rate. CloudFront charges separately for bytes delivered to viewers, for requests, and for the fetches that miss the cache and go to the origin — and the delivery rate is tiered and varies by geographic price class, so a single per-GB figure is only ever an approximation. The cache hit ratio is the lever that matters: at 92% only 8% of the volume reaches the origin, and lifting the ratio cuts origin charges and origin load in the same proportion.

For a content-heavy site CloudFront is usually cheaper than serving from the origin because edge delivery rates undercut regional data transfer out, but only if the cache hit ratio is high enough to keep origin fetches small.

This calculator takes 7 inputs: Data delivered to viewers, Price per GB delivered, HTTPS requests, Price per 10,000 HTTPS requests, Cache hit ratio, Origin data transfer price per GB, Free tier data included. The pre-filled defaults are a realistic starting point — replace them with figures from your own environment for a result you can act on.

The defaults are illustrative United States list prices for a single tier. Real CloudFront pricing is tiered by monthly volume, differs by price class and edge location, and changes over time — confirm the figures on the CloudFront pricing page and adjust the rate fields.

Strip query strings, cookies and headers that are not part of the cache key, set explicit long max-age values on immutable assets, and use origin shield for a second caching layer. CloudWatch reports the ratio per distribution so you can measure rather than guess.